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Real-Time Communication in WEB-browsers (rtcweb)

WG Name Real-Time Communication in WEB-browsers
Acronym rtcweb
Area Web and Internet Transport (wit)
State Active
Charter charter-ietf-rtcweb-02 Approved
Document dependencies
Additional resources Issue tracker, Wiki, Zulip Stream
Personnel Chairs Sean Turner, Ted Hardie
Area Director Murray Kucherawy
Liaison Contacts Cullen Fluffy Jennings, Magnus Westerlund, Ted Hardie
Mailing list Address rtcweb@ietf.org
To subscribe https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/rtcweb
Archive https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/rtcweb/
Chat Room address https://zulip.ietf.org/#narrow/stream/rtcweb

Charter for Working Group

The RTCWEB working group was originally chartered to standardize mechanisms that provide direct interactive rich communication using audio, video, collaboration, games, etc. between two peers' web-browsers, without requiring non-standard extensions or proprietary plug-ins. The result was a set of RFCs from RTCWEB, in addition to many other RFCs from other working groups, all of which are interrelated and had to be published together in what the RFC Editor refers to as a “cluster”. In the end, that cluster comprised more than 40 RFCs and was finally published in January 2021.

During the run-up to publication of the cluster, a contradiction was identified between what became RFCs 8829 and 8843. A description of this contradiction was added to both documents to highlight the problem, and state our intention to proceed with publication but quickly initiate an effort to publish updates to the affected documents.

The key part of the added text was as follows:

“The specific issue involves the handling of "m=" sections that are designated as bundle-only, as discussed in Section 4.1.1 of [RFC 8829]. Currently, there is divergence between JSEP and BUNDLE, as well as between these specifications and existing browser implementations …”

The working group is being reconstituted to take up this contradiction, come to consensus on a resolution, and issue Standards Track updates for those two documents. Specifically, the goal of this work is to address only the contradictions regarding "bundle-only" between BUNDLE and JSEP. The resulting aligned solution should avoid impacting the interoperability
with SDP Offer/Answer. Finally, the impact on existing implementations that are affected by any change is to be considered.

draft-ietf-rtcweb-sdp, which has not yet been published, will be returned to the working group to be updated according to the resolution of the issue described above. The working group will therefore produce updates to the JSEP and BUNDLE documents, and re-submit draft-ietf-rtcweb-sdp for publication after it has been revised. Updating any other document, or taking up any other issue, is out of scope and will require IESG approval via rechartering.

Coordination with the MMUSIC working group to develop this solution will be required.

Milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Aug 2021 Updates to the JSEP and BUNDLE documents to the IESG as Proposed Standard.
Aug 2021 Update to draft-ietf-rtcweb-sdp to the IESG as Informational.